WW-P North High girls' lacrosse back into MCT final

PLAINSBORO — West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Devin Brakel knew that yesterday’s Mercer County Tournament semifinal against WW-P South was special and, as one of the few seniors on the Knights’ squad, it seemed even more special to Brakel. And, thanks in part to Brakel’s efforts as well as teammate Olivia Harpel, North emerged with a down-to-the-wire 19-16 victory over the neighboring Pirates.

Now North will meet the winner of today’s Hopewell Valley-Allentown game on Saturday at 10 a.m. at Robbinsville in the MCT championship game.

“I’m excited because we’re going back to the MCT finals,” said Brakel. “Last year we got to the finals (against Princeton) but unfortunately we didn’t win. I’ve had a great career here, but it’s not over because we want to win the MCT title.”

Brakel’s Knights were in a dogfight with South in the first half, but after the Pirates’ Rachael Salerno scored with 12:10 left, it was all North the rest of the way. Kristine Towell scored a pair of goals and Harpel added another as the Knights took an 8-6 edge at the half.

No matter the situation, when these two teams meet, it seems to always end up a great, close contest, and the second half proved that out as the Pirates came out and scored five of the half’s first seven goals. They regained the lead at 11-10 on Colby Hussong’s unassisted goal with 16:15 left.

That’s when coach Beth Serughetti’s squad went on a tear scoring the next six goals. South got called for three quick yellow cards, and the Knights took advantage. With two goals from Harpel and Towell and one by Brakel, it looked like North was going to ice this semifinal game early.

South would have none of it, and, playing a player down the final 10:55, the Pirates fought back and closed the gap. When freshman Jordan Naidrich scored with 58 seconds left to make it 18-16, it still looked hopeful for the 7th-seeded Pirates. It wasn’t to be as Julie Tampellini fed Ana Lucia Dellien for the clinching goal.

“It’s unbelievable to get back to another MCT finals, it’s so exciting,” said North coach Serughetti.

“Obviously, we had this goal since the beginning of the season, and you never know how things are going to work out, but I’m really proud of these girls for working extremely hard in this game.

“I thought that Olivia played at a really high level today and I also thought that Kristine and Devin played very well for us today. Devin and Kristine are two of our seniors, and they wanted it really bad. And Devin’s been unbelievable of late. I can’t count the number of games where she’s come up huge for us, not only with her goal scoring but her second effort has been impressive.”

South coach Bryan Fisher, even in defeat, knows that having a West Windsor-Plainsboro school in the MCT finals is important even though it won’t be his Pirates making the trip. “They spilled everything they had today,” said Fisher. “They had a great win over PDS, exhilarating win over Princeton and have an 11-10 lead and some things didn’t go our way.

“We never put our heads down, played a girl down for 11:55 and found a way to make that a game.”